Tokyo ‘64 (Source: glacerie123.com)

A symbol of modernisation
1964 was a bumper year for the Japanese. In October of that year two events helped the country finally break free of the persisting shadow of an an ultimately inglorious and painful World War II experience. Japan’s capital Tokyo staged the XVIII Summer Olympic Games and Japan launched its iconic high-speed train service, the Shinkansen (meaning literally “new trunk line” or “new main line”), popularly called the “Bullet Train” (弾丸列車 dangan ressha) because of the similarity of the initial (0 series) design of the nose✲. Together, the Olympics and the Shinkansen’s arrival symbolised the fulfilment of “Japan’s recovery from the devastation of war and the beginnings of Japan’s stratospheric rise as an economic superpower” (Braser & Tsubuku)⌧.

(Source: JapanRail Pass)

Planning for the Shinkansen started in the 1950s and had its origins in the realisation that Japan’s conventional rail network was reaching capacity and not up to the demands of modernisation. The country’s geography, climate and population needed a faster, modern network. A VFT was identified as imperative for a land mass that stretched over several islands north to south for thousands of kilometres. Construction (and operational) challenges were manifold and extremely formidable – a mountainous country subject to earthquakes, typhoons, heavy rain and snow and flooding (Hood).

The original rail service, the Tōhoku Shinkansen connected the three principal cities on Honshu island, Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka. The impact on intra-Japan rail travel was immediate and dramatic. With the sleek “whiz-bang” new train reaching speeds of up to 210 km/h⍟, the journey between Tokyo and Shin-Osaka was cut from 6 hrs & 30 mins in an conventional train to around 4 hrs & 10 minutes in the Bullet Train! (in 1965 it was reduced again by a further hour)✪.

Two symbols of Japan (Source: National Geographic)

An accident-free record
As impressive as it is, the Shinkansen’s most impressive attribute is not its rapid speed, but its peerless safety history over a period of 57 years. The Shinkansen service has not suffered a single casualty or even one injury in the totality of its trips. The only blots on the perfect record in this time have been two derailments (one in an earthquake and one in a blizzard) (Glancey).

The JRG 6 (Source: JapanRail Pass)

Rail privatisation
Originally the Shinkansen train network was built and operated by the Japanese government (Japanese National Railways), but in 1987 it was privatised, coming under the ownership of six Japanese Railways Group (JRG) companies. Today they runs nine separate lines, smoothly criss-crossing the densely-populated Honshu and Kyushu islands and extending to the northern island of Hokkaido, it’s spotlessly clean carriages carrying an average of around 150 million passengers a year (JapanRail Pass). The network has two types of Shinkansen trains – Kodama Express and the limited stop Hikari Super Express train.

N700 series (2020) (Source: cnn.com)

Personifying Nihongo efficiency
The latest iteration of the Shinkansen, the N700 train with its aerodynamic duckbill-nose completes the Tokyo–Osaka journey in 2 hrs & 25 mins⌽. The N700S (Supreme) has the advanced capacity to continue operating during earthquakes. Punctuality is also the Shinkansen’s strong suit – the average delay for the railway’s fleet of trains is less than 60 seconds (Dow). The Shinkansen’s efficiency represents “an elegant solution for shuttling workers from one dense city to another” and doing it rapidly, workers living “in distant, relatively undeveloped areas can commute to Tokyo (for instance) in two hours” (Pinsker)〥.

Local dissenters to the “love affair” with the Shinkansen
The Shinkansen has been a change agent for Japanese economy and society, a potent symbol of the nation’s development. Research indicates that those urban hubs with a Shinkansen station experience higher population and higher employment growth rates (Sands). Not everyone in Japan however is 100% behind the Bullet Train companies’ unbending “full-steam ahead” approach. There have been pockets of local rural opposition pushing back against JRG’s relentless land acquisition process. Residents along the routes whose quality of life has been adversely affected by Shinkansen’s noise and vibration have also been vocal in their complaints (Hood).

Japan’s Maglev prototype (Source: ft.com)

Eye on the future
Not resting on the laurels of the Shinkansen series’ cutting-edge technology, research has been happening since 1962 on a linear motor railway system. In the 2000s JR Central commenced testing a Maglev train prototype, the Linear Chūō Shinkansen, which can reach a speed in excess of 500 km/h – this service is slated for introduction in 2027 (Nippon.com).

Postscript: To transfer technology or not to transfer technology?
Japan’s success with the Shinkansen has spawned imitators. China’s vaulting high-speed train ambitions—while denying charges of intellectual piracy by copying the Shinkansen—has seen it have to resort to reliance on German and French as well as Japanese VFT technology for its own high-speed train. Consequently some Japanese railway insiders have criticised the technology leak to China, lamenting that when you put high technical ability on display (as Japan has with its crown jewel train), it gets copied. However there’s no consensus on this point within Japanese government and business. Central Japan Railway Co (owner of Shinkansen and Linear Train Technology) have actively participated in the development of US high-speed trains on an ongoing basis, proponents of this approach argue that by not exporting the Bullet Train technology to countries with large markets, Japan risks losing out to competitors who’ll get in first…the Overseas Rapid Railway Project’s Katsunori Ochiai summed up the gains from exporting: “If the new Japanese model Shinkansen and linear trains are adopted in America, the market for manufacturers of the carriages and signal systems would be greatly expanded.” (Shimbun).

Shinkansen technology transfer’ first export overseas was to Taiwan, successfully helping to develop the Taiwanese High-Speed Rail system.

Taiwan HS Rail (Source: construction-post.com)

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✲ a blue snub-nosed design with white livery

present maximum operating speed of the Shinkansen clocks at 320 km/h

✪ another pioneering first for the Shinkansen: the first dedicated high-speed railtrack in the world

⌽ the N700 series has reached 332 km/h in trials

〥 the network’s efficiency and speed comes at a price – a typical ticket will set you back about $US130 (2014), unless you are subsidised by your employer (Pinsker)

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Articles and sites consulted:

’Japan’s Transfer of Bullet Train Technology A Mistake. China, Of Course, Has Copied It’, Sankei Shimbun, Japan-Forward, 18-Aug-2017, www.japan-forward.com

HOOD, Christopher P. “The Shinkansen’s Local Impact.” Social Science Japan Journal, vol. 13, no. 2, 2010, pp. 211–225. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40961264. Accessed 26 June 2021.

SANDS, BRIAN. “The Development Effects of High-Speed Rail Stations and Implications for California.” Built Environment (1978–), vol. 19, no. 3/4, 1993, pp. 257–284. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/23288581. Accessed 26 June 2021.

‘How the Shinkansen bullet train made Tokyo into the monster it is today’, Philip Brasor & Masako Tsubuku, The Guardian, 30-Sep-2014, www.theguardian.com

‘What 50 Years of Bullet Trains Have Done for Japan’, Joe Pinsker, The Atlantic, 07-Oct-2014, www.theatlantic.com

‘Japan’s Shinkansen: Revolutionary design at 50’, Jonathan Glancey, BBC, 15-Jul-2014, www.bbc.com

‘The Shinkansen Turns 50: The History and Future of Japan’s High-Speed Train’, Nippon.com, 01-Oct-2014, www.nippon.com

‘Five things to know about Japan’s Shinkansen: The trains that always run on time’, Aisha Dow, 11-Nov-2016, https://i.stuff.co.nz/